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EU ministers to grapple with US travel-security demands

(dpa) - The European Union's interior ministers
were set Friday to discuss how the bloc should deal with US demands for access
to security information on EU citizens travelling to the US.

US demands that the
EU provide such information in return for issuing the traveller with an
electronic travel authorization "are not possible for negotiations because
that is the law in the US, and we must apply that," Slovenia's Interior
Minister Dragutin Mate, who chaired the meeting, said.

"We must now
find solutions to what kind of data, under what conditions and how we will
apply that," Mate said.

Under the EU's
Schengen border-free system, member states share security and justice
information, such as criminal records, on travellers in a single data-base.

However, while some
Schengen states already enjoy a visa-free travel regime with the US, the newer
members in Central and Eastern Europe do not.

The EU has promised
to address this inequality on behalf of member states, but progress has been
slow, and member states have not yet mandated the European Commission - the
bloc's executive - to hold talks with the US government on the issue.

In the meantime, a
number of new member states - the Czech Republic and the Baltic states among
them - have signed bilateral deals with the US paving the way for visa-free
travel, saying that the EU-level approach has simply been too slow.

Talks are
complicated because some of the passenger data demanded by the US security
services are the preserve of EU member states, while other data are held to be
the common property of the EU - and can therefore only be surrendered with the
agreement of all members.

"If someone has
stolen a car, it's national data, even if it's sent to the (Schengen
information system), but data on, for example, refusing people for visas,
that's European data," Mate said.

But it is "very
hard" to list all the fields of data which fall in either category because
ministers have not yet mandated the commission to hold talks with the US, he
said.